


Back Where You Belong

by sugalights



Category: A.C.E (Beat Interactive Band), K-pop
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Break Up, Reader-Insert, Separation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27096718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugalights/pseuds/sugalights
Summary: It always hurt to pick up your daughter from her father's home, the memories of your past threatening to spill out each time the door was opened. But inevitably, there had to be a day you would need to go inside. To remember the reasons why you'd left in the first place and hope they were still enough to keep you away.
Relationships: Lee Donghun/Reader
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	Back Where You Belong

**Author's Note:**

> In an emotional place. Needed to write pain.

A single cracked tile drew your attention as you waited in the foyer of the place you formerly called home.

Footsteps echoed down the stairwell. Only one set of footsteps, padded thuds against polished wooden floorboards as Donghun approached the landing above you. He paused briefly at the top of the staircase, gaze falling to where you stood, lips lifting into a cautious smile.

“She says she’s still not finished making her present for you,” he called down, then began his descent. You remained in place, following his movements and fighting the urge to take a step back. Fighting the louder one telling you to take a step forward.

Your eyes were drawn back to the cracked tile instead, surrounded by others of perfect, pristine marbled white. It surprised you that your husband hadn't bothered to have it replaced in the six months you'd been separated. One irregularity allowed to mar the entryway, to announce to all who entered that something was amiss in this place.

Fresh flowers sat in the wide-rimmed vase on the table just beside the front door. The container was similar to the one you'd thrown to the floor all those months ago, your pain and heartache, your frustration giving it enough momentum to spider the tile into three sections.

But Donghun had staff for that, to fix everything in his life around him so that it ran perfect and uninterrupted. Vases. Dinners. Wives.

So then why was the tile unchanged?

He reached the bottom step, the Italian leather soles of his shoes finally touching down atop a perfect white tile, and your eyes were drawn back to him. To the pretty soft pink of his lips, the gentle downward slope in his eyelids that sometimes made his gaze look sad, even when he wasn't.

"She said, 'Can mommy please wait a few more minutes?'," he continued.

“Oh? What exactly is she making?” You wanted to look away, but your traitorous eyes stayed fixed on his face.

He held a finger to his lips. “She said it’s a secret and not to tell,” he whispered, then chuckled softly. Still nervous.

If you were honest with yourself, you missed the sight of him like this. The smooth lines of his body, complimented by his well-tailored suit were dredging up memories. Dark hair, brushed back, framing soft cheeks. That same handsome face that you'd stared down at in shock when he was on his knee in the garden, asking you to be his. Those same delicate, cinnamon eyes that reassured you that you belonged in his life and in his world.

But he had every right to be nervous, rare as this level of face-to-face had become. Since you'd left, you usually waited in the car for Eunbyeol to go inside or come out during the days she visited her father. It was only because she had been so late, apparently insisting on finishing her present for you, that you'd come inside at all.

"Let me get you something to drink while you wait?" he offered.

On unsure feet, you followed him down the grandiose hallway and into the kitchen. You had never cooked in here, Donghun's staff taking even that task away from you. At his direction.

The spotless counters and sleek, polished surfaces felt so void of human touch, the enormous kitchen so different from the one in the modest apartment where you lived with your daughter now. But one thing had changed in the months since you'd been gone. Peppered across the surface of the fridge were your daughter's drawings, your precious little artist spreading them around between both your houses like bits of her identity she needed to leave behind.

You never dared move them from where she left them in your own home. They brought her comfort and, to be truthful, it comforted you as well to see her spirit unfold on each page. Looking at them here, stuck on to the places her tiny hands could reach, they might have served a similar purpose for your husband as well.

"She can't really reach any higher on the fridge," Donghun said, his voice gently interrupting your observation. You saw his gaze following your own to the collection of artwork. "I don't have the heart to move them anywhere else. She puts them where she likes."

“There are more here than at our place," you said. You'd meant for it to just be polite conversation, but the realization hurt. It meant she drew more here, held on to pictures in her little backpack and waited to show them to him.

"Bigger fridge," he hummed, sitting down a glass of water in front of you. You looked around at the grandeur of the space.

"I’m sure she prefers all of this to staying in our tiny apartment anyway. Plenty of space to play, someone to bring her snacks and toys whenever she wants.”

Donghun's hand reached across the counter, fingertips grazing yours. Your own fingers twitched in response, but you didn't pull away. “Y/N, I can move you both into a bigger place. I can get you your own staff-”

“No, please, that’s not what I meant.” You started to draw back your hand, but Donghun held fast, curling his fingers between yours. And your foolish decision to stay there, to let him hold you for another moment sparked courage behind his eyes. His voice stayed soft as he spoke, as though he was afraid you might swim away like a frightened goldfish.

“Let me help you. The accountant says you haven't touched any of our accounts since you left. You won’t let me buy you a more reliable car. You work 70 hours a week and pay through the nose for daycare when you know full well I could have staff caring for her here. And for what?”

You pulled back your fingers then turned away from him. Turned away from the truth of what he was saying. You were proud. And it was probably stupid not to take his help, for Eunbyeol's sake. But you didn't want Donghun’s money to define you, to define your daughter. It had already taken enough away from you.

"I don't need your money," you said, your voice a ghost in the space between you. He was at your side a moment later, in front of you, his hand at your waist, the other circling on your wrist, his touch delicate.

"This isn't about money. This is about us, you. My wife."

You looked away, eyes focusing on nothing.

"I love you, Y/N." The words sliced through your barrier like poison-tipped shards of glass, dragging across your chest and leaving behind an aching burn. And though you thought the desire had been stomped out of you months ago, something inside you folded hearing them again. Why had you even left your car?

“Don’t say those words to me," you whispered. Tried to swallow and find your voice again, the one that wasn't screaming inside. "You don’t know how to love me anymore, Donghun.”

“If you would let me try-”

“How could you try when you were never here?" you bit, trying desperately to dredge up the anger that had sent you out the front door. "Eunbyeol sees you more every weekend than she ever did the four years we lived here with you.”

All he’d ever done was work. Work and ignore you, if that was considered an active hobby. And when he did bother to speak, it was usually some complaint, delivered in his patient tone, but always bubbling with disappointment. For not living up to his standards. For being the flaw in his flawless world. What was love in the face of the elite, up against his need to fit into the society that raised him?

But you didn't come from money the way Donghun did. You'd married him because you loved him. Before you saw what greed and power did to the people around him. How it changed him. How it changed his love.

"Why haven't you fixed the floor out front?" The question burned its way out of you.

If nothing else, he was always hands in, fingers flexing, sending you the messages of his emotions just as much as his face.

"Because it reminds me every day that I need to be a better man than I was." His eyes were twin stones, landing with crushing weight against your chest. But you didn't dare push him away. Not when the smell of him was this close and you'd missed it for so long. Not when his jaw was set with determination, charging the air around you.

“I’m here for our child," he said. "I know I wasn't before, I see it now. That's why I'm trying to fix it, Y/N. And I can be here for you. I can fix this.”

"I'm here to pick up my daughter, Donghun. Not to talk about this."

He leaned away from you an almost imperceptible amount. This time the sadness in his eyes looked full, a pained shimmer glossing over them.

“I can see it in your eyes sometimes, you know? When you put down your guard and let yourself smile or laugh with me. You look at me like you did when we were first married. When we were happy.”

“I remember it sometimes too and I see you through those eyes. And then I remember the rest. We weren’t good for each other.”

He'd slowly let the affection drain out of him. And when he shut down it was cold, hard. Your marriage felt void most of the time, barren.

Except on nights when he would come home, ragged from the day, completely spent on business. When he found solace and comfort in your arms. When his walls were down and he was bare, and he finally resembled the man you'd fallen in love with.

It could only have been one of those nights that Eunbyeol had come to be. After her birth he'd appeared less and less. It was as though his duty to you had been done, and that absence had been enough to make leaving so easy. Was it really even leaving a marriage if only one person was present?

“I failed, once. Why won’t you just let me try again?" His hand was at your cheek, fingers brushing soft against your skin. "I’m not asking you to move here right away or even agree to stay married if it doesn't work. Just let me in. Let me try. Please.”

You shook your head, cursing as the tears broke free from your eyes against your will.

"Y/N, please. Give me a chance." Your fingers splayed across his chest, a war between them. To push him away along with all his past mistakes, the ones that sent you out his door. To pull close the possibility that maybe he could be the man you loved again. Fresh tears fell, landing against your hands, blooming across the fabric of his suit sleeves.

But it was too late. He'd had years to change, years to fix the unhappiness festering within these walls, to remember that before you were his wife, before you became just another financial duty, another obligation, another flaw to be polished, you were just a girl who loved him.

It was too late.

“Mommy, why are you crying?” Eunbyeol's voice was high and clear, echoing off the walls of the kitchen. 

Donghun pulled away from you and you whipped your head towards the entrance of the kitchen where your daughter stood in her light blue dress and gauzy green tutu, hands gripped around a thick piece of construction paper.

You hurriedly tried to wipe your eyes with your sleeves as Donghun walked over to her side, kneeling down next to her.

“Are you fighting?” she asked and your heart broke, a gasping sniffle escaping from your chest. You tried your best to collect yourself.

“No, honey, no. Daddy was tickling me so hard, it made my eyes water.” You tried to laugh, but it came out strange, like an uncomfortable wheeze.

"What did you draw, sweetie? Go show mommy what you made for her."

Eunbyeol ran to your side, the little pouch of crayons she kept slung across her hip bouncing against the side of her tutu as she ran. She held up her paper to you and you knelt down to take it.

She had made another drawing covered in stickers and glitter, centered around the three of you: "Mommy" and "Daddy" labels above you and Donghun, and your beautiful daughter, green tutu on even in her artwork, standing between you both.

“Oh, Eunbyeol, it’s lovely. You did such a good job. Do you want to hang it on the fridge when we get home?”

“This is home, Mommy, and I want to put it here," she said with a quiet pout. Shards of ice shot through your chest. "When can we come back here for good? I want to see Daddy every day. And he has a pool!”

You wiped the back of your hand against your cheek again, as though new tears were already falling. “Mommy can’t see Daddy every day, sweetheart. That would make Mommy sad.”

Eunbyeol lowered her head, kicking at the floor in defeat. “Daddy is sad that he can’t see you every day.” She looked up at you, the curve of her eyes looking just like her father's. Sad, as though she too were already close to tears.

“I guess we’re a sad family, huh?”

"Honey..."

Suddenly she snatched the drawing from your hands, dropping to her knees and placing the paper on the floor in front of her carefully. She opened her little pouch of crayons, pulling one out while Donghun walked up behind her, both of you looking on in silence.

And with her black crayon, Eunbyeol made her final edit to your gift: a large, drooping frown for each of you, the biggest drawn on her little face in the middle.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you like, you're welcome to follow me on twitter @sugaurora_ for writing updates or just to say hi! 😊💕


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